Mike Fay, a Wildlife Conservation Society biologist on a National Geographic Society-funded expedition, recently spotted about a hundred dead elephants on an aerial survey just outside the park's borders (National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society).

"Even for someone who's been around for 20 years watching elephants be killed in that area, that's a lot of elephants," Fay said of the massacre, which he observed in early August, while he was also on assignment for National Geographic magazine.

All of the elephants found had been killed since May, he adds.

"And we certainly didn't find them all. It was just a sample survey that we did outside the park."

Fay also spotted camps of presumed poachers near elephant massacre sites. The armed horsemen fired automatic weapons at his small aircraft in an apparent attempt to drive Fay from the scene and cover their crimes.

But Fay's team, working with the Chadian government and the European Union, has succeeded in spotlighting a major poaching problem that they warn must be addressed immediately.